Claims Labour Party housed foreign students in 'sweatshop marae' to help with election campaign

The Labour Party is in damage control mode after claims that some international students it brought out to New Zealand for the election campaign were housed in poor living conditions at an Auckland marae.

Critics claim the 85 students were living in a "sweatshop marae" on Auckland's North Shore.

The Labour Party has apologised and says it will help pay for the students to go home early if they want.

The rest will be housed across the country and will continue to work on the Labour Party campaign.

The volunteer programme was set up by former Labour Chief of Staff Matt McCarten.

He says "the programme was extremely popular and quickly became oversubscribed. The scale of the programme is now greater than I can manage, and I am aware of issues that this has caused".

The Labour party head office has now taken over the running of the programme.

ACT leader David Seymour says "selling a marae as suitable accommodation for 85 workers is simply exploiting the ignorance of foreigners".